📚 What We’re Reading Wednesday

Batman: Revolution

A return to Gotham as only the Burton era could imagine it.

(Spoiler-free)

There are versions of Gotham that feel like a map — and then there are versions that feel like a dream you half-remember under streetlights and thunderclouds. John Jackson Miller’s Batman: Revolution** takes us back to that dream.

Set in the same universe as Tim Burton’s 1989 film, this novel picks up the threads Miller began in his previous entry, expanding a Gotham that’s equal parts grand opera, newspaper headline, and whispered rumor. The caped crusader isn’t just dealing with crime in alleyways — he’s navigating a city wrestling with movements, power struggles, and the question that haunts every Gotham story:

Who truly owns a city — the people, the powerful… or the fear of the Bat?

🦇 What makes this story stand out?

Without spoiling events, here’s what resonated with us:

• A Gotham in transitionThis isn’t the Gotham before Batman, and it isn’t the Gotham that’s fully embraced him. It’s the uneasy middle. The revolutionary spark. A city deciding what it will become.
• Burton DNA, without imitationThe world has that familiar gothic whimsy and urban decay — but it isn’t a retread of the films. It builds, expands, and dares to ask new questions.
• A Batman defined by strategy, not spectacleThis is a detective who knows the weight of every symbol he uses. Less fist, more mind. Less myth, more man.
• A cast that feels human in the shadow of masksCitizens, leaders, believers, agitators — many think they understand Batman. Few actually do. That tension fuels the narrative.

🎧 Why we think Burton-era fans should read it

If the 1989 Batman film lives in your memory like a thunderclap — the purple coats, the cathedral spires, that animated-yet-gravely tone — this book fits beautifully into that legacy. It doesn’t try to be a lost movie script. Instead, it expands the mythology in a way only prose can.

It’s a Gotham you feel as much as you see.

🗨️ Your turn

Have you explored Miller’s Burton-verse novels yet?

Keep it spoiler-free, but tell us:

What defines the Burton Gotham for you — the style, the music, the villains, or the way Batman moves like a rumor through the city?

Until next Wednesday…

Keep reading. Keep imagining. Keep Gotham close.